Boulder County Fair parade set to leave Main Street for fairgrounds

LONGMONT --The Boulder County Fair's annual parade is getting ready to leave downtown and head for the fairgrounds.

Under the new proposed route, the parade would leave the southern entrance of the fairgrounds, heading east on Nelson Road, north on Sunset Street, and west on Boston Avenue, before returning to the fairgrounds from the north.

Fair coordinator Laura Boldt said a number of the fair's participants and exhibitors asked for the change.

"The comments we heard was that the parade was just another city parade, it didn't have a relation to the Boulder County Fair," she said.

County fair parade route map

That wouldn't have always been the case. From 1899 to 1977, the fair was held in Roosevelt Park. Even after the Boulder County Fairgrounds opened on Hover Street in 1978, the parade continued to muster near Roosevelt for its march along Coffman and Main streets.

Official notice already has been given to Longmont city staff, according to the Kiwanis Club, which sponsors the parade each year. Boldt said the full application likely would be turned in Monday.

Kiwanis member Ken White, who's overseeing the parade for the club this year, said there was a little hesitation when Boldt first pitched the idea. But not for long.

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"We had a board of directors meeting and it took 22 seconds for everyone to say 'Yeah, let's try it,'" White said. Besides drawing more people to the fair itself, White said, a relocated parade might help more of the 4-H kids participate. Exhibits by the 4-H clubs open Aug. 2 on the fairgrounds; the parade is Aug. 3.

"I think it's a positive move by the fair board," White said.

Planning for the new 1.8-mile route has meant a bit of coordination. Boldt said she'd been working with a lot of organizations, including the city, Kiwanis, the Twin Peaks Rotary Club (which traditionally holds a chuck wagon breakfast nearby) and the Farmers Market that meets near the end of the new parade circuit.

One group that hadn't been addressed yet was the Longmont Downtown Development Authority. The parade is one of four on Main Street each year, LDDA director Kimberlee McKee said, and it would be missed.

"It's always a shame to lose any long-standing event," she said. "But we certainly hope the Boulder County Fair folks success for their goals."

City Councilman Alex Sammoury, who's also a member of the LDDA board, said he'd rather have the parade stay.

"In my opinion it's not necessarily a good thing, because I think people like going downtown for parades," he said. "I'd prefer they keep it downtown. It's a tradition."

Kathy Weber-Harding, the president and CEO of the Longmont Area Chamber of Commerce, said she had heard from Boldt while the new route was being planned.

"I'm not really on one side or the other," she said. Some member businesses said they saw little additional traffic from the parade -- other than to use the bathroom -- while others loved seeing it come back every year.

"It's been a tradition to have it downtown," Weber-Harding said. "But I know sometimes traditions have to change."

Boldt said that while changes like this always take a bit of backlash, the responses that she had been getting were generally "very, very positive."

The shift comes in the midst of another big change for the fair expanding to a 10-day schedule. Or perhaps that should be called a change back; the fair had been a nine-day event for years before organizers decided to trim down to five days in 2010.

Organizers at the time cited some "down days" the previous year and suggested a shorter fair would be less expensive and save wear and tear on everyone involved. But following the 2012 fair, exhibitors told the fair board that the shorter schedule crammed events too closely together.

The longer fair also will bring the Colorado Pro Rodeo Association back to the event for the first time since 2010.

"All these changes are the requests of fairgoers, exhibitors, people who use the fair year after year," Boldt said.

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